


Broken Rudders

by icenineporcupine



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Puppies, Soft husbands are soft, is it fair to tag this with 'puppy love' I don't even know, it's literal fluff, no really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28969758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icenineporcupine/pseuds/icenineporcupine
Summary: Apparently Flynn can't go back to sea for a fortnight without his new husband making questionable decisions. And here Mathias was supposed to be the no-nonsense one.
Relationships: Flynn Fairwind & Jaina Proudmoore, Flynn Fairwind/Mathias Shaw, Mathias Shaw & Anduin Wrynn
Comments: 32
Kudos: 81





	1. Chapter 1

Mathias had spoken to the King on a number of occasions regarding the royal gardens. 

By _gardens,_ he meant the untamed _labyrinth_ of primrose and fruit trees that grew out of the north side of Stormwind Keep like a cancer from Stranglethorn Vale. 

By _spoken to,_ he meant _complained. Begged. Beseeched._

The gardens were a security nightmare. Accessible by too many. Open too late in the evenings. Visible from the air. Next to a body of water. Acoustically complex. Home to a startling overabundance of nightshades. Every time Mathias began to enumerate the issues he ended up beside himself in a matter of moments. 

“I am simply _not_ going to give you a security briefing _in the gardens.”_ Mathias thought he’d remained impeccably composed when Anduin had suggested it the day before, but internally he’d been a hair’s breadth from ripping his hair from his scalp. “It’s—” 

“Not safe?” Anduin had cut him off immediately with a laugh, gentle but needling. “So you’ve mentioned, Mathias. _Frequently._ How fortunate, that I’ll have the world’s deadliest assassin by my side the entire time. Perhaps next week we’ll venture to Blackrock to check in on the Prince.” 

_And the week after that to Thunder Bluff for a drink with Baine,_ Mathias thought, already exhausted at the prospect. 

“I am both sworn and proud to serve you, Your Majesty, but respectfully, you are an absolute _menace._ ” 

_“Respectfully,”_ Anduin sang back, with a grin like a lion. “I think you delight in the challenge, if I’m to judge by your choice of husband.”

And, well, what could Mathias say to refute that? Certainly not much. It didn’t help that he still wasn’t used to hearing people refer to his _husband_ at all. It had been several months, but the word still managed to throw him slightly off balance every time he heard it. Anduin, for his part, had somehow perfected it into a weapon. Because of course he had.

Most people observed the young King’s sunny demeanor and relentless optimism and fancied him a sweet, innocent thing. _Like his mother,_ they’d say, and then carry on without another thought on the subject. One had to linger a while to realize the boy was also as reckless and stubborn as his father had been, and with a wit twice as sharp. 

Mathias? He had lingered a long, _long_ time—over the course of his life, but also over the course of this afternoon. He wagered Anduin was making him linger a long, _long_ time in the garden, awaiting his arrival, simply to make him suffer for his safety lectures. 

He sighed heavily and rolled his palm around the pommel of his dagger, resisting the urge to draw it and engage in some target practice with the trunk of a nearby pear tree. The tree didn’t deserve his frustration, and throwing the dagger would mean _relinquishing_ the dagger, which felt unwise in the current context, even for a moment. 

It wasn’t that he legitimately _believed_ there would be trouble, today of all days, half-a-year into a Horde armistice, and with a tentatively prospering Kingdom. In fact, most of his update for the King could be summarized as a _lack_ of any well-developed threats. However, there also remained a lack of any well-developed leads on Sylvanas, and as long as that held true, ambushes were still _possible_.

He’d positioned himself carefully, spending the better part of ten minutes determining the wisest place to wait— somewhere obvious enough for the King to locate him, but not so exposed that every guest in the greenery would stumble upon him. Mathias didn’t fancy small talk with a nuisance of nobles any more than he fancied an ambush. 

_It’s possible you’re both paranoid  and peevish, love. _

He could hear Flynn’s opinion on the matter clear as if he’d spoken it right against his ear. The captain—his _husband_ — had been at sea for the better part of three weeks, and Mathias missed him fiercely, as if he hadn’t been alone for the better part of three _decades_ before meeting the man. Attachment still fit him strangely. He squirmed within its confines the same way he squirmed when Flynn would toss his greatcoat around him as the temperatures dropped in Boralus: it was warm, and unexpectedly wonderful, but too big to wrangle with. He spent an excessive amount of time terrified of drowning in it... 

Anduin was nearly twenty minutes late. Late enough that Mathias was swiftly losing conviction that the young King was simply taunting him, and instead beginning to worry that something had befallen him elsewhere in the keep. He considered whether to abandon his post and hunt for his ever elusive royal charge, or keep watch like some stiff Titan construct in this mockery of a jungle.

A handful of wrens chimed in with their opinion from the pear tree. They were simple birds, small and brown and boring by most standards, but Mathias had missed the sound of their chitters and chirps while stationed in Kul’Tiras. He smiled.

 _Perhaps there’s one thing that isn’t terrible about this place,_ he thought, and cupped his hands to his mouth to whistle a reply. 

And that, of course, was precisely when the ambush occurred. 

His attackers were upon him before he could make sense of what was happening, swarming him from all sides and scrabbling at the leather of his boots, his pants. A less experienced roofwalker would easily have been toppled to the grass. A less poised man would have yelped in bewilderment. 

(He _may_ have yelped in bewilderment.)

He was _fairly_ sure there were seven of them— and this was after attempting to count them at _least_ three times, and failing. They thwarted all attempts at order and sense, wiggling and squirming and jumping over each other, apparently just trying to … greet him? That couldn’t be right. Eat him, maybe… 

He hadn’t the slightest idea what to do with himself other than just stand there, staring down at the writhing mass of curly dark fur obscuring his feet. 

_Puppies._

“Oh! Master Shaw! I’m so _terribly_ sorry!” cried a voice Mathias only vaguely recognized, and a moment later a child was rushing toward him as well. “Were you the one that whistled? They’re such good pups, but so _very_ fond of whistles…” 

“It was a bird call…” Mathias supplied, rather uselessly, staring as the girl knelt down and attempted to herd all of the dogs back to her, patting frantically at her knees and chanting their various names. She was Gilnean— one of Greymane’s extended court that had taken up shelter at the Keep after Teldrassil had burned. “It’s... Merrian, right?” 

The girl blinked at him. She was probably twelve or thirteen. 

“Aye, sir,” she confirmed with flushing cheeks, as if confessing to a crime. “Not sure what to make of the fact that you know that. Have I done something?”

“Didn’t you know that sicking hounds on the Spymaster of Stormwind is a punishable offense? And that’s _on top_ of the record I already have on you.” 

In times past, he’d have been able to speak those lines with a cold calm, and without so much as a twitch to his lips. Now, the horror hadn’t even begun to gleam in the girl’s eyes before he could feel his face crumbling into a grin. 

_Light, he’s made me so soft…_

“I know, because it’s my job to know the people I protect as well as I know the people I protect them _from,_ ” he assured her, simply. 

“O-oh…” the girl replied, clutching one of the dogs in her lap. She didn’t seem entirely convinced. An awkward beat passed. Three of the puppies continued to paw at his knees, whimpering. They didn’t seem to _ever_ cease moving. Not entirely. The concept was vaguely distressing. 

“So… what does one… _do…_ with so many dogs?” he asked. He hoped it wasn’t an offensive question. On more than one occasion he’d nearly asked Genn about the Gilneans’ fondness for hounds, and then thought better of it. There was a reason Mathias loathed small talk. He wasn’t very good at it. 

But Merrian laughed easily and reached out to gather another of the pups as it bounded back to her. 

“Well we don’t _keep_ them. Not all of them, at least. We Gilneans are working folk, and our dogs help us with our work. Turns out people will pay a fair bit of coin for an extra set of paws— or a first set.”

“I see…” Mathias certainly knew a thing or two about the value of a good Gilnean tracking hound. And some of the larger animals could carry cargo as well or better than a mule, depending on the terrain. Still: “These don’t seem like working dogs…?” He nodded at the chocolate torrent that was now threatening to engulf the girl instead of him. 

“Ah, but they are,” she said, grinning as one of the pups flung itself over her shoulder and then wriggled until it fell down her back out of view. “These wee scoundrels are _water dogs_.” 

“... water dogs?” Mathias echoed, lifting a brow. 

A year ago, he wouldn’t have blinked at the concept. A year ago, the most notable thing about Stormwind Harbor in Mathias’ eyes was the sheer quantity of contraband it allowed into the city. 

But now? 

Now, if he didn’t carefully keep himself occupied, he haunted the roofs and ramparts in the evenings like a restless wraith, just waiting for a green sail on the horizon. The sea had become a bit of a fixation, for better or worse.

“Water dogs!” the girl confirmed. “The curly coat is water resistant, and keeps ‘em warm in the chilly northern seas. And they’ve got webbed feet like little ducks, see?” She captured one of the dogs and spread its toes apart, and sure enough, Mathias could see the translucent flap of skin that bridged them. “They’ll save a sailor from drowning, or help reel in a catch. I’ve heard pirates even train them to dive for treasure!” 

“Is that right…” Mathias mused. He really rather doubted the last part, but the thought was quaint, and it was difficult to think of pirates without thinking about _one former pirate_ in particular. “... what do the Kul’Tirans make of them?” 

“Oh they’re wild about them! The Lord Admiral wants to put one on each new ship in the fleet, actually. Turns out those islanders can train a brilliant tidesage, but they’re really rather rubbish when it comes to dogs. Most of this litter is Stormsong bound— all of them save… well, _that_ one, actually.”

Merrian nodded toward Mathias’ feet, and Mathias glanced down to find only one puppy left, insistently perched with its paws on the shinguard of his boot. It stared up at him through a fringe of brown curls with eyes that hadn’t yet lost all their newborn blue, frantically wagging its tail and panting at him delightedly, as if it were simply _very_ sure it had never encountered a finer human in all its several weeks of existence. 

Mathias felt compelled to try to explain to it how very mistaken it was, and all at once found himself seized by a strange, fabulous, _terrible_ sense of familiarity. 

_Oh, no._

“He’s a charmer, that one— won’t leave you alone for even a moment. Bet he’d make a better first mate than most men. But he’s a smidge smaller than the others, and with a shorter tail. Superstitious folk, those sailors. None of them wanted a runt with a broken rudder on their ships. Shame if you ask me. But what did I tell you? Islanders: rubbish about dogs…” 

The girl couldn’t _possibly_ have known that the words she was stringing together were Mathias’ verbal equivalent of crippling poison. But in under thirty seconds she’d done a better job of incapacitating him than any assailant had ever managed with envenomed daggers. 

He was on his knees in the grass without really registering how he got there. A Gilnean girl was laughing at him, and there was a puppy climbing up his chest, and puppy smell in his nose, and puppy slobber in his goatee. It was a unmitigated, chaotic _disaster—_

—and he knew better than to think he had any hope of convincing himself he didn’t love it. This had all happened before, after all, and relatively recently at that.

“What’s his price?” he asked, grimacing as the pup continued to lick his face.

The girl stopped laughing. “You’d have to ask my mum, if you’re serious…” She blinked at him. “... _are_ you serious?”

Mathias managed to gather the puppy beneath its front legs and lift it gingerly away from him, just out of licking range. Undeterred, the little thing continued to wag its tail so fervently that its entire lower half swung back and forth to balance the momentum. 

_You don’t know the first thing about dogs. You’ve let one ridiculous creature into your heart and now you’re entirely compromised. Your loneliness is a liability. You can’t possibly be serious._

“I… think I may be, yes…” 

Mathias was still learning to trust his heart. It was a sheltered thing that withered under scrutiny and was quick to panic. His _instincts,_ however, had rarely, if ever, let him down. And his instincts were insisting that this made sense, for reasons he wasn’t sure he’d grasped yet. 

“Forgive me for asking, but what’s a Spymaster need with a water dog?” She sounded surprised, and maybe a bit confused, though not offended.

“What makes you think a _Spymaster_ can divulge information like that?” he parried, lifting a brow at her. 

She blushed but wasn’t as quick to fear as she’d been before. After a beat, she squinted at him, suspiciously. 

He relented with a gentle snort. 

“My husband is Kul’Tiran,” he said, hoping that would be enough to settle the matter. It wasn’t, of course. 

_“You_ have a _husband?”_ Merrian asked, as if that were twice as shocking as the notion that he wished to acquire a dog. On second thought, it _definitely_ was. 

“I do. He’s…” — _a charmer, that one— won’t leave you alone for even a moment,_ his brain supplied, automatically, and unhelpfully. He sighed. “He captains a pair of ships out of Boralus. Merchant vessels. Not part of the fleet, exactly…” He didn’t know why he was saying so much. “... but I think he could use a set of paws all the same. And I don’t think he’d much mind if they belong to… a runt with a broken rudder, as you put it.” 

Mathias glanced down and suddenly realized that, at some point while he’d been talking, he’d settled the pup onto his lap and it had promptly fallen asleep, stretched out long with its head pillowed against the buckle of Mathias’ belt. Its tail continued to beat an insistent little rhythm against his kneecap. 

He tentatively reached out to scratch in the soft curls of its belly, and it lifted a hind leg to mime the scratching motion. _Ridiculous._

Merrian laughed again. 

“I ought to be bringing them home. Pa had me run them through the gardens to wear them out, and looks like I’ve succeeded. But if you come ‘round tomorrow before noon you can discuss a price with my mum,” she reiterated. “She’s the one that keeps all the books.” 

Mathias promised he would, and the girl supplied her address, and then, as swiftly as it had set upon him, the ambush disappeared, leaving him alone and mystified. After a minute or two, the wrens began to chitter again. 

It might have been another minute or two, or an hour or two, when King Anduin finally appeared. Mathias was no longer sure, lost in a deluge of thoughts. 

“My deepest apologies, Mathias,” said Anduin, and he did sound truly apologetic. _Not stringing me along, then,_ he thought. “I was waylaid by an unexpected visit from The Lord Admiral. You know her, and how she tends to just… teleport into the Keep… whenever she wants.” 

“I believe that’s what happens when you instruct your mages to leave a gap for her in the throne room’s warding,” replied Mathias. “You could always have them lock it down, and inform Lady Proudmoore that she can meet you elsewhere… like the gardens.” 

Anduin smiled devilishly at him.

“I suppose I could…” he mused. “She sends her regards, by the way. And also this…” 

Anduin pulled a neatly folded bit of parchment from his belt, and handed it to Mathias. 

An ornate and lopsided “M'' graced one side, clearly scrawled by a heart that thought calligraphy was romantic, and a hand that had absolutely zero practice at the art. A single sea stalk was pressed into the Kul’Tiran wax seal on the other side. 

Mathias lost the battle not to blush. The notion that Flynn apparently had no reservations about using the Lord Admiral and the High King as couriers for his love letters was a little much to contemplate. 

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” he said, slipping it quickly away into one of the myriad secret layers in his deceptively flat leather ensemble. “I’ll have words with him when he returns.” 

“Light, Mathias, please don’t,” Anduin laughed, “That was the high point in my day, even if it wasn’t addressed to me. Honestly.” 

Mathias tried not to contemplate that statement more than he had to. It felt laced with a strangely familiar melancholy. 

“So did anything _terribly unsafe_ happen in the gardens while you waited?” Anduin goaded, before the silence could grow too heavy. “Wandering rogue orcs? A scourge uprising? Twilight cultists? Insufferably petty nobles?” 

“Actually…” Mathias said, blinking as the previous twenty minutes reoccured to him. He furrowed his brow and smoothed a hand over his moustache. “I think I just adopted a puppy.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You only came aboard because you... missed me?” Flynn tried, innocently enough. 
> 
> “... because I thought it would be proper to introduce you to the newest member of your crew while you were still aboard your ship.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to the lovely folks who commented on the first part, and encouraged me to actually write Flynn's reaction! I hope it satisfies...!

The day was overcast but bright as the _Middenwake_ made port, and Stormwind loomed over the harbor like a mirage, its marble towers occasionally spotlit by sun shafts. It was hard to look upon without squinting, but Flynn kept dazzling his eyes anyway as he helped his crew moor the ship, unable to stop pondering the skyline. 

It was a strange place to get used to, if he were honest. It seemed to rebuke all attempts at familiarity, remaining distant and untouchable even when you were well within its walls. But Flynn was determined to fall in love with the city every bit as deeply as he’d fallen for its equally distant and untouchable Spymaster...

A warm ache kicked up in his chest at that thought, until he found himself languishing on the quarterdeck, scanning the bustling docks for any sign of the cropped, wind-ruffled red hair that would stop his heart, then finally set it beating properly again. 

He knew it was unlikely. Despite all the time he’d spent sunburning on the deck of _The Wind’s Redemption,_ Mathias _really_ wasn’t the type to be caught out in the open in broad daylight, waiting on the winds for a ship. He was a frightfully busy man, besides. It was entirely possible he’d been sent on a mission of his own, and Flynn would crawl back to Old Town that night to find nothing but an apologetic note on the table. 

_And that would be alright,_ Flynn told himself, sighing. Really, it would. He’d known what he was signing up for when he’d put a ring on a mainlander’s finger. There were enough songs about it to carry a sailor to Kalimdor and back a hundred times. 

Still, he’d hoped that his first time back to sea as a married man would be a shorter voyage. A quick jaunt down to Stranglethorn, perhaps. Something to ease him back into the life… 

Luck hadn’t been on his side, and Flynn had found himself tapped by the Lord Admiral for a multi-leg affair. He’d set forth nearly a month ago to Kul’Tiras with the _Middenwake’s_ hull all but bursting with trade goods, then picked up the _Arva_ for a bit of reconnaissance work ‘round the islands to the north. There’d been reports of more undead kvaldir _—_ his absolute _favorite_ type of kvaldir. But for better or worse, nothing had turned up, and he’d gone back to port to ready the _‘Wake_ for her next outing.

Boralus had embraced him during the layover, inviting all the intimacy that Stormwind evaded. And it had been heartening to witness just how much his homeland was prospering in the aftermath of the war. He caught up with friends and went crawling through all his old haunts, but no amount of ale gave him the words to describe how hollow and sweet and surreal it had felt to moor the _‘Wake_ where the _Redemption_ had been for more than a year. 

He hadn’t slept at all the first night, sitting on a coil of rope and gazing over at some rickety Kalu'ak fishing ketch instead of the Alliance flagship, swallowing rum until it numbed the frustrating homesickness he felt in his own damned harbor.

The second evening had started much the same as the first, but about halfway through, all the words he’d been missing pulled him under like a riptide. He’d spent the rest of the night pouring his heart onto parchment, describing in no uncertain terms how he’d come to understand that _home_ was no longer a place. He wasn’t sure what Mathias would make of it. The next morning he wasn’t sure what to make of it himself. He’d never written a love letter before. 

But when he’d trekked up the steps to Proudmoore Keep to deliver his report on the kvaldir, a moment of patented Fairshaw Foolhardiness had him pressing two sealed parchments into the Lord Admiral’s hand instead of one.

_“No kvaldir in the second one. No kvaldir in either of them, actually, but…” Flynn had faltered, feeling the blush heat his face even in the mage’s perennially chilly presence. “I’d hoped, with all your teleporty shenanigans…” he cringed at himself. “... that you, er, might find yourself in Stormwind before I manage to get back... and—”_

_“I’m sure Master Shaw is quite anxious to hear from you, Captain.” A knowing smile had glittered in the Lord Admiral’s eyes._

_“Yes, well, he tends to be like that about… most things, actually…”_

_She’d laughed aloud at that._

_“I’ll make sure this reaches its destination,” she’d promised, “And on that note, let’s discuss the real reason you’re headed to Rustberg next, shall we?”_

Until that point, Flynn had thought that the _‘Wake’s_ final task was to ferry a handful of carpenters and their lumber. While that remained true, The Lord Admiral revealed to him in confidence that the _real_ reason she was sending him to Tol _bloody_ Barad, of all places, was to pick up a few artifacts from the Baradin Wardens, and transport them discreetly to Stormwind, where they could then be delivered to Khadgar in Karazhan. 

Why neither the Admiral nor the Archmage could devise a way to move their arcane absurdities without involving a boat— _his boat_ —was beyond him, but Lady Proudmoore was paying him generously, and Flynn was certain it couldn’t be any worse than hauling Azerite. 

He’d become less certain when he actually saw the crates. An unsettling green light seeped out between the boards of one. Another occasionally _gurgled,_ though the Wardens had insisted there was nothing living inside. Yet a third seemed to heat up ten degrees for every degree it was tilted. Needless to say, his crew was left to load the crates themselves. Flynn had them banished to the back of the cargo hold and convinced himself he didn’t want to know...

“Captain…” 

His boatswain joined his idle surveillance of the harbor. She was a spry, salt-and-peppered woman by the name of Kendra Kersey— just _Kers_ to most of his crew—but Flynn counted her a blessing. There wasn’t a scrap of sail or splinter of wood on the _‘Wake_ that she didn’t know backwards and forwards. 

“What’s the word?” he asked. 

“She’s all in one piece, more or less…” the boatswain replied. 

“More or less?” he asked. “Dare I press?” 

“Well, you know that crate that was getting hot when we tipped it?” 

“Yeah?”

“We’re on a bloody _boat_ , Captain.” 

Flynn’s eyes widened, then squeezed shut. 

“Look, literally _anybody_ could have said something,” he complained. 

“I know,” said Kersey. “It’s on all of us.” 

“How bad is the damage?” 

“Fortunately not terrible. The cargo deck is looking a bit warped, but the heat wasn’t enough to actually ignite anything. If we’d hit a storm on the way back, though? All bets would’ve been off. We’re lucky fools, the lot of us.” 

Flynn hummed in agreement, turning his attention to the main deck, where some of the boys were busy hauling crates up from the cargo hold, preparing to offload them. 

“How much do you think, to fix the warped boards?” He dreaded the answer. 

“Couple hundred gold, I’d reckon,” said Kersey. “It’s a four or five foot buckle, but you’ll probably want to replace it all rather than patch it. I can have a shipwright give a better estimate on the morrow.”

Flynn smeared a weary hand over his face. A few hundred gold wasn’t some titan-sword, end-of-world figure, but it wasn’t cheap. Suddenly the generous paycheck from the Admiralty made more sense. Teleporting the artifact probably would have detonated it. Still, some warning might have been nice _…_

Below them, the crew was busy moving the crate in question, hunching at awkward angles to keep it level across three sets of shoulders as they came up the stairs. He considered rushing down to help, but a fourth set of shoulders would only complicate things further, and Kersey was still finishing her report. Flynn’s eyes glazed as he listened.

This was undoubtedly why it took him about fifteen full seconds to realize he was staring _directly at his husband._

Flynn blinked in shock, convinced his senses were playing tricks on him. But no, there he was, improbably hidden behind a bunch of crates. He was dressed for deskwork, with his vest cinched over a pristine linen shirt, forgoing his gauntlets and epaulets. Without them, and with the salt air feathering his hair, he painted a deceptively soft portrait, leaning against the wall of the forecastle just the way he used to skulk on the _Redemption:_ arms and legs crossed, just daring anybody to approach. He was probably still concealing about fifteen different knives, half of them envenomed.

“There’s also a span of loose railing on the forecastle deck,” Kersey was saying. “Normal wear and tear, but you’ll want to take care of it before somebody takes a tumble… Captain? Are you listening?” 

“Mostly,” Flynn mostly lied. “Sorry… I’ve just spotted a deck fire in need of my attention…” 

“A _deck fire—”_ the boatswain repeated, following Flynn’s gaze with alarm, “Shouldn’t we— _oh._ ” She trailed off as she spotted the source of his distraction. 

Mathias chose that moment to steal a glance up at them, but when he caught Flynn staring he swiftly tore his eyes away again, gazing out across the water instead. _What a tidesdamned tease._ Flynn felt like that miserable crate, tipped sideways and blazing from the inside out at the sight of him. 

The boatswain’s elbow was suddenly in Flynn’s ribs, chiding. 

“Yep, that sure is a deck fire. Think you might be in trouble, Captain.” 

“Oh, I’ve been in trouble since he first washed up in Boralus…” He knew he was smiling like a bloody idiot, but he couldn’t really bring himself to care, at the moment. 

Kersey snorted. “How’d he even get aboard, eh? We haven’t even dropped the gangplank.”

Flynn shrugged. 

“You don’t get to be _Spymaster_ by waiting around for gangplanks.” 

“S’pose not,” she conceded, patting him on the shoulder. “Go on then.” 

Flynn reciprocated absently before brushing past her and hurrying down to the main deck. 

Mathias pushed away from his post as Flynn approached, vaulting over the barricade of cargo crates between them with all the easy, silent grace of a nightsaber. 

“Ah, what’s this?!” Flynn exclaimed theatrically as he found himself held fast by the lapels of his coat. “Ambushed aboard my own ship!” 

“Welcome home, Captain,” Mathias whispered, and leaned up to press a kiss to his mouth.

It was sweet, and sincere, but ended before Flynn had really even felt it, much less reciprocated. A pang of disappointment knotted briefly in his stomach before he willed it away. He knew exactly how uncomfortable his husband found public spectacles. He _also_ knew how thoroughly Mathias would make up for it later… 

“Y’know, love, traditionally speaking, sailors’ sweethearts wait on the docks for their kisses.” 

“Well, _traditionally speaking_ , spies show up wherever they want,” Mathias informed him, gruff but with a glimmer in his eyes that made Flynn’s stomach do flips. “What’s in the box?” he tilted his head toward the questionable crate, which now sat some distance from all the others, tucked in a nest of burlap and sail scrap to insulate it from the deck. 

“Oh that? Late wedding gift from the Admiralty,” Flynn told him, waggling a brow. 

Mathias squinted at it, and then at him.

“You’re lying.”

“Try not to sound so hopeful!” Flynn chuckled. “Yes, I’m lying. I reckon it’s _actually_ Lady Proudmoore’s latest attempt to kill me.” 

“Latest?” Mathias blinked. “Was there a prior attempt?” 

“I dunno, Mat. Maybe when she sent me spelunking into the bloody _Zandalari treasury?”_

“If she had intended that to kill you, she wouldn’t have sent you in with _me,”_ Mathias teased, and _oh,_ Flynn had missed that smug mouth. 

_“You_ were the thing she was trying to kill me with,” Flynn replied, and stole another quick kiss. “And I reckon she succeeded.”

“So why the box, then?” Mathias persisted, not to be distracted. 

“Truth is I have no idea, love. But unfortunately, I can’t disappear into the shadows with you till Khadgar sends someone to collect it.”

“That’s alright,” Mathias said. He took a step back. “I only came aboard because I…” 

All of a sudden something resembling _nerves_ seemed to seize his husband, and Flynn watched him close up like a clam, clasping his hands behind his back and squaring his shoulders until he stood just as stiff and poised as he’d been the very first time Flynn had tried to flirt with him. That was to say: _bloody irresistible._ Flynn desperately wanted to step into the man’s space and rile him up until he blushed like a beach rose. But something told him there was a hidden variable in play here. He lifted a gentle brow.

“You only came aboard because you... missed me?” he tried, innocently enough. 

“... because I thought it would be proper to introduce you to the newest member of your crew while you were still aboard your ship,” Mathias finished, with the sort of eloquent opacity that one only learned from decades of diplomacy. 

“Come again?” Flynn laughed, his other eyebrow soaring up to meet the first. “Do you fancy yourself a sailor, now? I hate to tell you, but my crew’s already—” 

Mathias cut him off with a short, sharp whistle, and before Flynn could gather his wits well enough to ask _‘what in tides’,_ something else leapt over the stack of crates beside them, albeit with absolutely _none_ of the elegance or control that Mathias had displayed moments earlier. 

On the contrary: it was a clumsy little mess of curls that could barely make it over the tops of the boxes, but compensated for its lack of finesse with sheer enthusiasm. 

The puppy— _Tides,_ it was a _puppy—_ raced in circles around his husband’s legs, pawing at his knees and bouncing about as Mathias did his best to calm it down. 

“Hey— hey! Sit…” he insisted, pointing at the deck. _“Sit.”_

Flynn gradually became aware that his mouth was dangling open, and shut it.

He knew that most people found Mathias unsettling. A storm always seemed to loom at the edges of his voice: a threat that sent even seasoned soldiers and sailors scrambling. But while most folks saw a storm and ran from the lightning, Flynn had repeatedly stood in its path, waiting for the mercy of the rain. And every sweet little drop Mathias eventually revealed to him was more precious than any treasure a pirate had ever possessed... 

“Sit!” Mathias commanded again, growing impatient but unable to hide the smile on his face. Forget a _drop_ of mercy. He was a tidesdamned _deluge_ of it, right then. His warmth swept across the deck and buried Flynn like some belated avalanche of gold from the Zandalari heist. 

_Goodbye, world._ Flynn thought. _What a way to go..._

It was frankly no wonder that it took five or six repetitions before the puppy finally took its orders seriously and parked its butt. 

_"Very_ good,” Mathias praised it immediately, sleight-of-handing something tasty out of his bracer and crouching down to let the little dog scarf it out of his palm. He scratched behind its ears and beneath its chin, and it stared up at him adoringly, whipping its tail against the deck like a thick rope, and trembling visibly as its little brain tried to weigh the pros and cons of behaving, versus just smothering Mathias in kisses… 

_That’s no choice at all._ He could feel the dopey grin stretching across his face. 

“I left you alone for barely a month, and you’ve gone and replaced me with the closest creature you could find!?” he accused, giggling deliriously. “Oh, _Mattie…”_

“He’s not for me _,”_ Mathias insisted. “He’s a Gilnean water dog. Since Kul’Tiras officially rejoined the Alliance, some of King Greymane’s entourage have taken up breeding them for the new ships in the fleet. I was skeptical, so I did quite a bit of research on them, and I’m really rather impressed. For one thing—”

As his husband descended into a spell of pedantry, Flynn descended to his knees on the deck, beckoning to the puppy with grabby hands and some kissy noises. He reckoned he was supposed to help Mathias train the little mop of mayhem with words, but there would be time for that later, and at the moment he just wanted to sink his hands into that curly coat. 

After a brief moment of consideration, the puppy trotted over to him, and _oh, yes, that fur was exactly as soft as it looked._ Flynn had to resist the urge to bury his whole face in it. Tides, he was _so_ tired. He longed for a hot bath, a hot meal, maybe a finger or two of rum, and then a lazy, lovely evening in the sheets with a certain handsome ginger— 

—a ginger who was currently reciting an endless list of statistics: how long a water dog could hold its breath, and how far it could swim, and how deep it could dive, and in what temperature seas, and—

It wasn’t that Flynn didn’t _care._ It was just that, well, there was a _puppy_ climbing up his lap—a _very cute puppy_ , in fact, and one that Mathias had apparently acquired for _him_. He couldn’t quite wrap his head around how it had happened. 

The little dog sniffed around in the folds of his coat, maybe hunting for treats, or maybe just confirming how much he really needed that bath. Flynn couldn’t help but picture the pup getting into every manner of mischief in Mathias’ office while he tried to work. There was no way it wouldn’t drive him _spare._ And yet he’d apparently been tolerating it anyway? For how many days? How far in advance had he planned this? He’d certainly never said anything, but tides knew the man could keep a secret better than the bottom of a bay...

“—you’re not listening.” 

“Nope!” Flynn confessed all too easily, cradling the puppy’s face in his hands and ruffling its floppy ears around. “What about you, pup? Do you listen to Mattie when he drowns you in tedious information that will benefit you later? No? Of course you don’t. Such a good pup. Yes you are! Yeshu-are!” 

“I haven’t yet trained him to _speak_ ,” Mathias informed him, flatly. 

“No need. I am _very_ fluent in Puppy _,”_ Flynn assured him. He risked a glance at the man and was rewarded with a roll of those emerald eyes. “Has he got a name yet?” 

“... I’ve been calling him _Rudder_.” 

“Rudder, eh?” Flynn beamed down at the little dog as it licked his hand, “Do you keep the wayward Spymaster sailing straight when I’m not here? Is that what you do?” 

Mathias snorted. “It’s a long story. We can change it if you have other ideas. He’s still young enough that it probably won’t matter—”

“Absolutely not. I love it,” Flynn said. “And I love him.” He stood and scooped the puppy up with him, holding him like a baby in the cradle of one arm. “... and I promise I will actually listen to everything you just told me about water dogs the next time you repeat it all.” 

Mathias frowned and lifted a brow. 

“What makes you think I’m ever going to repeat it?” 

“Aw, don’t be like that, love,” Flynn begged with his best charming grin. When that failed to have any effect, he tried his best pout instead. Mathias pretended to ignore him, staring off at nothing in particular across the boat, but Flynn could spot the smirk hiding beneath his moustache. 

“I still have a few reports to finish,” Mathias said, then, “I’m going to head back to the Keep for a while. I can leave him with you if you’d like, or take him so he’s not underfoot…”

“If he’s going to be my new cabin dog, he’ll have to learn the ropes at some point,” he laughed. “No time like the present!” 

“If you’re sure…?” Mathias looked skeptical. 

“Are _you_ sure?” Flynn tilted his head with a knowing smile. “Or will you get lonely and adopt a cat? Oooh! Or a _parrot_ , maybe?”

Instead of answering, Mathias withdrew a folded parchment from his uniform and pressed it against Flynn’s chest. Flynn’s unoccupied hand flew up to catch it, and their wedding bands collided with a tiny metallic _tink_ that did wild things to Flynn’s heart. 

“What’s this?” he laughed, as Mathias withdrew his hand. “A new missive already? Can I come to bed tonight if I don’t run all your errands first? I swear, if it’s a grocery list—”

Flynn trailed off as he realized the way the parchment had been sealed— with the pommel of Mathias’ dagger, and a scattering of Firebloom petals pressed into clear wax. A beautiful "FF" ligature graced the opposite side, framed in a few little sketches of songbirds... 

Rudder was wriggling in his arm and licking at his beard, but he barely noticed as he ran his thumb against his husband’s perfect calligraphy. His heart felt too big for his ribcage, and he had a _very_ substantial ribcage.

“... you replied to my letter… even though you had no place to send it…” 

Mathias just hummed in response, as if the notion were obvious and mundane, and not the frankly _sweeping_ romantic gesture it was. He darted in to press another kiss to Flynn’s cheek, light as the breeze on the harbor.

“I’ll see you both this evening,” he said, and scratched Rudder at the scruff of his neck as he began to pull away.

Flynn knew he didn’t possess the subtlety or the discipline of a spy, but he _did_ count lightning reflexes among his roguish talents. In a heartbeat he’d stashed the letter in his coat for later, shifted the puppy over his shoulder and snatched Mathias with his free hand, digging his fingers into the crisscross of laces at his stomach and hauling him in against his chest hard enough to steal his breath. 

“I love you so _bloody_ much,” he whispered, and kissed him passionately, until Mathias recovered from his shock and relaxed into it with a soft sigh. Flynn dipped him halfway to the deck, restraint be damned. A handful of wolf whistles rang in his ears—his crew, no doubt shirking their duties to ogle the spectacle. He felt Mathias’ cheek heat against the bridge of his nose, but he didn’t try to pull away, and that told Flynn everything he needed to know. _Tides, I’d kiss you forever if I could…_

No sooner had he dared to entertain the thought, than something wet and reeking of bacon lashed hot over his cheek—

—and then went straight for Mathias, splashing him with slobber from chin to temple. 

“Oh— _!”_ Mathias gasped, and narrowly avoided a puppy tongue in his mouth. “ _Ugh!”_

He stumbled backward, sputtering and smearing uselessly at his face with a leather bracer, no longer a nightsaber, and every bit an indignant housecat. 

_“Light,_ that’s disgusting, and will never cease to be disgusting.” 

Flynn couldn’t help but laugh. 

“Fancy a bath? There’s a whole harbor beside us. I could toss you in?” 

Mathias spared Flynn a look that registered somewhere between smitten and _smiting_. 

“Try that, Captain, and I’ll toss _you_ in the Stockades,” he replied, but the threat was hamstrung by his licked-lopsided moustache. The blush on his cheeks clashed gloriously with his ginger hair as it bled all of his freckles together. 

Flynn thought he might survive an entire year on nothing but the sight of him. 

And he wasn’t the only one: Rudder squirmed and whined in Flynn’s arms as Mathias moved out of reach, desperate to follow. Flynn had to shift quickly to keep the pup from taking a tumble to the deck. 

“He still needs _a lot_ of training,” Mathias sighed. 

“I dunno, love,” Flynn countered, fumbling until he’d pried loose the knot in the kerchief around his throat. He shook it out and stepped closer again. “I mean, sure, his technique could use a bit of work, but overall…?” 

He gently wiped the rest of the drool off his husband’s flushing face, then kissed a path up the other side. 

“... I think he’s got the right idea.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What the author says: I live for angst and meandering cerebral dramas!
> 
> What the author writes: sOft huSBaNds wITh soFt d o g g o... 
> 
> ... 
> 
> Um. I am very sorry about the tooth-rotting fluff...  
> You can find me on [tumblr](https://icenineporcupine.tumblr.com/) if you'd like to chat about your dental bills, or this ship?

**Author's Note:**

> *sweatdrop* 
> 
> I have no idea how this came to exist. I am a cat-loving coast-dweller who is exactly as rubbish at dogs as this Gilnean girl claims that Kul'Tirans are. I don't know what came over me any more than Mathias does. 
> 
> The puppy is whatever the Azerothian equivalent of a [Portuguese water dog](https://www.portuguesewaterdogsofsandiego.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/pwd-i-am-your-puppy.jpg) is.


End file.
